


Doctor Robert Bruce Banner's Copious Sweater Collection

by readbetweenthelions



Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Ficlet, Fluff, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-12
Updated: 2012-10-12
Packaged: 2017-11-16 04:38:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 457
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/535588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/readbetweenthelions/pseuds/readbetweenthelions
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The long and short of it is that Bruce Banner owns a lot of sweaters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Doctor Robert Bruce Banner's Copious Sweater Collection

If Bruce had is way, Pepper thinks, he would buy a thousand of those way-too-big sweaters and he would just live in a nest of them, like a strange, wooly bird.

He has dozens already – soft ones and scratchy ones, argyle ones and striped ones, a few with ugly knit patterns and a few with decent knit patterns, and one sleek cashmere one – a compromise between Bruce and Tony. All of them, with the exception of the impeccably well-fitted cashmere, are at least a size too big for Bruce. The arms are long and he pushes them up past his elbows. The torsos are too long and they come down past his butt. They are baggy and loose and not exactly flattering.

Tony doesn’t like the sweaters. He says they hide too much of Bruce, they obscure him. But Pepper thinks it’s easier to see Bruce, the _real_ Bruce, when he’s wearing one of his sweaters. The sweaters make Bruce comfortable. The sweaters obscure just enough of him physically that he doesn’t have to focus on his outward appearance so much – he can focus on taming the monster in his psyche, and with the Hulk safely under wraps, Bruce can just be _Bruce._ Tony doesn’t think of these things, but Pepper always does.

Bruce wears the sweaters constantly, even in the lab where Tony complains bitterly of the heat but refuses to turn down the thermostat. He wears them with his boxers to bed at night, a combination that Tony laughed at for a full quarter of an hour the first time he saw Bruce that way. He wears them when he and Pepper are cuddling on the couch, watching the food network and discussing which dishes Tony wouldn’t like so that they can try them out.

Tony teases him about the sweaters. He says they’re unfashionable, that Bruce looks like a senior citizen, that someday he’s going to get rid of all of Bruce’s sweaters in the dead of night. But Pepper knows that Bruce knows, as Pepper does, that Tony would be upset if Bruce stopped wearing the sweaters. Tony _likes_ picking the pills off the sweaters when they’re cuddling – it keeps his hands busy. He _likes_ how warm they make Bruce, and how they soften all the little parts of Bruce that stick out. He _likes_ having a thing, a small thing, that he can joke about and he knows beyond a shade of a doubt that Bruce will always know he is joking. The sweaters are just as comforting to Tony as they are to Bruce, though he’ll never let on.

Pepper likes the sweaters. They make Bruce happy. They make Tony happy. And nothing makes Pepper happier than seeing her boys happy.


End file.
